The Favor

by Megan Hart

  She reached to squeeze his arm, meaning to be reassuring, but she must’ve surprised him, because at the touch, Andy jerked his arm from her grasp. He whirled, eyes wide. It passed in a moment, nothing more than an automatic reaction, but Janelle stood with her mouth open and her arm outstretched. She pulled it back in a second, embarrassed and not sure if it was for him or for himself. Andy blinked, then grinned.

  “Sorry,” he told her matter-of-factly. “I’m a little crazy sometimes.”

  The grin had broken her heart, just a little. His statement finished the job. Janelle said a strangled goodbye around the lump in her throat, and let herself out the front door.

  Andy stalks the halls without looking from side to side, gaze straight forward but seeing nothing. If you’re in his way, he elbows past. If you step in front of him to catch his attention, you end up shoved against a locker.

  “Hey!” Janelle says, pissed off. “Andy, what the hell?”

  He turns, slow, slow, his face pale, blue eyes somehow dark. He looks at her without emotion. He says nothing.

  Whatever Janelle meant to ask him is lost in the depths of that gaze, and she watches him walk away, feeling as if a goose is dancing on her grave.

  Outside, the frigid air turned to smoke in front of her face, and the tears became glass on her cheeks. She paused on the bottom step of the Tierneys’ front porch for a moment to swipe her eyes clear. The path was slippery enough without trying to navigate it with blurred vision. Snow crunched under her boots on the sidewalk as she headed for Nan’s back door.

  “I’m just looking out for him, you know. For both of them.” Gabe’s voice stopped her with her hand on the door handle.

  Janelle turned. Gabe leaned against the back porch railing of his house, gazing over the shrubs that still looked new to her. The cherry tip of his cigarette winked at her. She’d given up smoking when she found out she was pregnant with Bennett, and had never taken it up again, but the old craving rose in her with a sudden fierceness.

  “I understand.”

  “No,” Gabe said. She couldn’t see much of his face, but that hint of sardonic laughter was familiar enough. “You don’t.”

  She wasn’t going to stand out here in the cold and argue with him, but she didn’t want him to have the last word, either. “So, try me. Tell me what your problem is, Gabe. Because you’re right. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how it feels to be responsible for someone’s welfare and well-being, what a burden it can be.”

  She drew a shuddering breath. “I sure as hell can’t possibly know how it is to feel like everyone relies on you. I certainly don’t have any clue what it’s like to have guilt weigh you down so much that you’ll do just about anything to make yourself feel better. Oh...wait. Yes. I can.”

  He laughed again. The cigarette went dark. He became nothing but shadow.

  “Big difference,” he said. “You had a choice.”

  Then he went inside his house and left her standing in the freezing dark.

  FIFTEEN

  ANY MOTHER OF a twelve-year-old boy had to also be an archaeologist. Sorting through the detritus in Bennett’s backpack, layer by layer, Janelle could’ve written a dissertation on the social life of a sixth-grader. Along with the half-filled water bottles, candy wrappers and worn-to-the-nub pencils, there were also the crumpled, forlorn and ubiquitous pieces of paper.

  She was looking for a permission slip for the field trip, which absolutely had to be turned in tomorrow or Bennett would have to stay behind in the principal’s office. She found the needed form and set it aside. She also found a lot of other things.

  With Nan napping, Janelle didn’t want to holler for him, but neither did she want to haul everything up to his room. She settled for calling him from the bottom of the stairs. When he appeared at the top, she held aloft a rainbow of papers. “Come here.”

  Reluctantly, he did.

  “What’s all this stuff?”

  Bennett shrugged. “I don’t know. Stuff. Junk.”

  Janelle pulled out an insurance form, one for reduced lunches, another with instructions on how to deposit lunch money in his account so he didn’t have to carry cash every day. She’d been killing herself trying to make sure she had small bills for him to take, and now she found out she could’ve just written one big check to last a few months.

  “Some of this stuff isn’t junk.” She plucked at a creased paper covered in what looked like melted chocolate from a granola bar or something. “Some of this is important. From now on, please make sure you take everything out of your backpack when you get home and sort through it.”

  “Okay.” Bennett had a foot on the stairs, easing upward, but he wasn’t going to get away so easy.

  “Hold it.” Janelle shuffled through the papers again and pulled out a test emblazoned with a scarlet F. It had a space for her to sign. “Were you supposed to show this to me?”

  His shrug was maddening.

  “This says I was supposed to sign it and you had to return it. Obviously, you didn’t.” She dug farther and pulled out a note from his teacher expressing concern about Bennett’s performance in math, and requesting a meeting. Janelle held it up, hating the way his eyes shifted from hers, how his feet shuffled. Connor had looked at her that way once or twice, and that had been enough.

  “You can sign it now.”

  She’d known he was struggling with math, but not the extent. Andy had come over only a couple times to work with him. “Is Andy helping you at all?”

  Another shrug.

  Janelle sighed. “Is your homework finished?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Math? Everything?”

  Bennett paused. “Yeah.”

  That didn’t convince her. She dug again and pulled out a reading log with spaces for books read, how many minutes spent and if a comprehension test had been completed. Half the log was blank but for red pen marks. Janelle’s stomach tightened, anger making her grit her teeth. Math was one thing, but Bennett had never struggled with English or Social Studies.

  “What is going on with you? You’re supposed to be reading, and you’re not? What?”

  “I already read the books she has on her list. She won’t let me skip them.”

  “So finish the tests on them, get the credit if you already read them. You have to do the work, Bennett.” Janelle pinched the bridge of her nose against a headache. “No games.”

  “What? No!”

  She nodded. “No games or anything else until you’re caught up on your work. And you bring it to me. I’ll check it.”

  Bennett sighed from someplace deep inside, turned around and went up the stairs. He didn’t stomp or slam his door, but it was easy to see how put-upon he felt. Janelle hung her head for a moment, one hand on the newel post, trying to gather the strength not to be annoyed by what she knew was typical kid behavior. God knew she’d given her mother more hard times than Bennett, so far, had ever given her. She didn’t know how her mom had managed.

  “I almost didn’t,” her mom reminded her on the phone a few minutes later when Janelle called her. “I was at my wit’s end with you.”

  “Rehab or reform school. I remember.” Janelle laughed quietly. She’d taken her phone out to the back porch so she could be close if Nan called out. Spring was on its way, but it wasn’t unheard of for March to have blizzards as bad as any in December, and though she was comfortable in a sweatshirt, the sky told her it shouldn’t be a surprise when the temps dropped again. The air smelled good, though. Fresh. She breathed deep.

  “But you went to Nan’s instead. I was lucky.”

  “No,” Janelle said. “I was lucky.”

  Her mother chuckled. “Looking back, I think I made so many mistakes with you because I was so determined to make you perfect.”

  “Really?” Janelle had never heard her say that before. “What made you think you had to?”

  “Oh...so all the people who looked down their noses at me for having you without marrying your dad m
ight be put in their place, I guess. I mean, sure I got knocked up out of wedlock, but look at my beautiful, smart, talented and well-behaved child. See what a good mother I am? It was a plan, anyway.”

  “You’re a great mother,” Janelle said.

  “And you are beautiful, smart and talented,” her mother replied. “The well-behaved part...not so much.”

  Janelle had spent some time feeling bad about what she’d put her mom through, but she snorted softly now. “I could’ve been worse. A lot worse.”

  “I know that now. But at the time, you seemed so out of control. You always were more your own person than Kenny ever was. You paved your own path. I shouldn’t have tried so hard to make you fit into a mold, Janelle. I should’ve been more proud of you back then, for some of the things you did. For being unique.”

  “For not fitting in?”

  It was her mom’s turn to snort. “So you dyed your hair and wore weird outfits. So you pierced yourself and wrote rebellious essays. They were great essays. I guess I just didn’t know how to deal with you. I thought I’d have a daughter more like me, you know. Into pastels and teddy bears and stuff. But really, I should’ve known better. I mean, I did know what your dad was like.”

  By the time Janelle had found out she was pregnant, she’d lost track of Connor. It had never been more than a fling, him an exchange student from Ireland determined to sleep his way through as many women as would have him. His smile, that accent, those eyes—they’d given her a perfect reason to go to bed with him for a few months, and an even better reason never to tell him he’d fathered a child. Janelle knew too well what it had been like growing up with a charming desperado as a dad. She’d determined she’d never put her kid through that.

  “I look at Bennett and I see Connor. It’s all over his face.”

  “You used to look so much like your dad it was scary.”

  “He has Connor’s expressions. His sense of humor, sometimes. And it doesn’t seem fair,” Janelle said after another second or so in which she struggled to find the right words to express what had always been a mishmash of emotions, “that he should have anything from his dad, when I’m the one who’s raised him. I’m the one who’s tried to teach him right from wrong, and been with him when he was sick, and helped him learn to read and tie his shoes.... I’m the only one who’s here. There’s just...me.”

  “There’s not ‘just’ you. You’re a great mom. I’m so proud of you, Janelle. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I know how tough it is to raise a kid alone—you remember I didn’t marry Randall until you were in fourth grade. Before that it was you and me. Sometimes your dad, sure. But mostly, it was us.”

  It wasn’t the same. Janelle was a girl, raised by her mom. She’d had a dad, even if his appearances in her life were haphazard and spontaneous. She’d had Nan, too.

  “Don’t you think a boy needs a father?”

  Her mom laughed, not unkindly. “This from the girl who said marriage was the best way to ruin a relationship?”

  Janelle smiled. “I’ve never been married, what do I know?”

  Her mom made a thoughtful noise. “Well...sure. I guess it’s better for a boy to have a dad. Or two parents—it’s always better for kids to have two parents. But that’s not always possible. Are you asking me if I think you should get married just to give Bennett a dad? If I thought that, I’d have told you to marry Ryan what’s-his-name.”

  “You didn’t like Ryan,” Janelle reminded her.

  “No, but you did.”

  “Obviously not enough,” Janelle said with a roll of her eyes at the absurdity of marrying Ryan. “Since I broke up with him.”

  “You’ll find someone, and when you do, you’ll make that decision. And you’ll do it because you want to marry him, and also because he’ll be a great addition to your son’s life. I know you, Janelle. You’re not one of these women who need a man so much they’ll jeopardize their kid just to have one. You might’ve been a trial as a child, and a pain in the ass as a teenager,” her mom said, “but you’re a wonderful woman and a great mother. Don’t you forget that.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Gotta run,” she added. “I need to get this last load of laundry in the wash before Randall gets home. We’re going out to dinner and the movies tonight.”

  Thirty years married, and they still went on dates. Janelle and her stepfather hadn’t always seen eye to eye, that was true, but he’d always been good to her mom. He was great with Bennett. In adulthood, Janelle had learned to appreciate Randall a little more, as he’d learned to judge her a little less.

  With the phone call disconnected, Janelle tucked her cell in her pocket and stood, now chilled. Inside, she found Nan up and about at the kitchen sink, filling the kettle. “Nan, I’ll do that.”

  Her grandma turned, water sloshing in the kettle. “I wanted some tea.”

  “I’d like some tea, too. How about a snack? I can put out something to eat, how’s that?”

  She wasn’t terribly hungry. They’d eaten dinner just an hour ago, but Nan had picked at it and pushed most of it away. She’d need to eat something with her next round of meds. Without waiting for an answer, as Nan finished filling the kettle and put it on the stove to heat, Janelle pulled out the bowl of cut fruit she’d made earlier that day. She added a plastic container of cubed cheese and some baby carrots, along with a bottle of ranch dressing. Everything went on the table. The dishwasher still wasn’t fixed. She’d had a service guy out, spent a hundred bucks for him to replace the parts she already knew needed replacing because of Gabe’s list, and that hadn’t solved the problem. Until she could figure out how to fix it or buy a new one, they were eating off paper plates and washing by hand.

  Nan shuffled into the living room and paused, leaning on a dining table chair. She looked tired, though she’d been napping since shortly after dinner. She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly before looking at Janelle. “Can you get my pills, honey?”

  The tray with its selection of bottles was in its place in the corner cupboard, and Janelle put it on the table in front of the chair. Nan hadn’t taken a seat yet. “Sit, Nan. I’ll get the water.”

  The kettle whistled. Janelle got it and filled a teapot she took from the cupboard. She added a tea ball filled with loose tea she’d picked up from the store. She’d brought the teapot and tea ball with her from California. She and Ryan, a long time ago, had taken a culinary course that had taught the proper way to make a pot of tea, according to the Brits. Letting it steep, she covered the pot with a knitted cozy and settled it onto a tray she’d found tucked away in Nan’s closet. She added a pair of mugs, thinking about her pretty teacups still packed away upstairs in boxes shoved beneath the eaves. She’d have to get them out. She also added a few packets of artificial sweetener and a small container of milk.

  It looked great, all of it, but she nearly dropped the tray when she took it into the living room and found Nan slumped forward in her chair. With a low cry Janelle put the tray on the table, sloshing tea onto the cozy. She put a hand on her grandmother’s shoulder, not quite shaking her. Nan looked up, her gaze unfocused only for a second before it turned sharp.

  “Good Lord, girl! What are you doing?”

  “Nan, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Nan snapped. “I was just a little sleepy. I got tired waiting for you to bring the tea, that’s all. I didn’t feel like getting up.”

  Janelle’s heart was beating too fast. She sank into a chair and put her trembling hands in front of her, flat on the table. “You scared me.”

  Nan’s eyes twinkled and her lips twitched. “I see.”

  “Not funny.” Janelle shook a finger. “I thought you were taking your pills.”

  “Oh. Yes. I was.” Nan looked at the tray and bottles. “I did. I think I did. Oh, I’m not sure.”

  Janelle paused, trying to figure out how to tell, but couldn’t. Taking more medication than the dose would definitely cause trouble, but missing a dose...ho
nestly, she thought, as she poured tea for both of them, would it matter? Really? “Careful. It’s hot.”

  “It’s bitter.” Nan eyed the tea ball. “Where’d you get that?”

  “I brought it with me. You use it instead of a tea bag. So you can use loose tea.”

  “Do you know, my mother used to make her own mint tea. She’d grow the mint right out in her yard, bring it in the house. Sometimes she’d just add it fresh to hot water, sometimes she’d hang it up to dry. Oh, it smelled so nice.” Nan took a deep breath as though she could smell it right then. “She’d have liked that thing. That whatchamacallit.”

  “Tea ball.”

  “Yes, she’d have liked it.” Nan put a hand over her eyes and began to cry.

  Alarmed, Janelle reached for her. “Nan, what’s wrong?”

  It took a few minutes for her to calm down, but when she did, she waved away Janelle’s concern. “I’m an old woman, that’s all.”

  “Does something hurt? What can I get you?” Janelle warmed her hands on the mug to keep them from shaking. She could never remember seeing Nan cry.

  “I just missed my mother. That’s all. I thought about the tea and I remembered her, and I just...missed her so much. She died in 1957. She was younger than I am now.” Nan shivered and dabbed at her eyes with a paper napkin, then blew her nose with it.

  Janelle knew a lot about her mother’s family. Her maternal grandparents had kept a large family tree painting in their rec room, poster-size, with spaces for new additions to the family. With every birth, they’d added the names to the tree. Janelle’s mom had taken it when they passed away, and hung it in her basement bar, though it hadn’t been updated since Bennett’s birth.

  Of her dad’s family, Janelle knew very little. Of course, Nan had a mother, but until this moment Janelle couldn’t recall anyone ever talking about her. If her dad had ever spoken of his grandmother, it hadn’t left an impression.

  “Tell me about her,” Janelle said. “I’d like to know.”

  Nan wiped at her face again and sipped some tea. She gave Janelle a shaky but genuine smile. “What do you want to know, honey?”